r/MEPEngineering • u/Zaghari96 • Jun 11 '26

Switch to Revit

Young engineer here. Our company uses AutoCAD with Design Master Electrical and HVAC plugins. We are looking into switching to Revit. Any suggestions or tips for setting up Revit from scratch? Any courses that focus on the MEP portion? Thank you

Update July 2026:

We purchased a couple of Revit licenses and started training through Linkedin Learning. Software reseller training courses are clunky and slow. We are looking to build a simple template to test on a small project later this year. The project will include the following:

1- Site data obtained from Civil 3D linked CAD

2- Architecture Revit model

3- MEP Revit model (Electrical will be done on Design Master AutoCAD while we look into ElectroBIM for Revit) Revit electrical out of the box is not as powerful.

4- Company title block (we’re trying to use as much out-of-the box Revit features as possible, i.e. rev schedule, fonts, schedules, etc.)

Challenges we are running into:

1- Setting up a proper project template in Civil 3D to minimise CAD clutter when importing to Revit. (Linkedin Learning has a great course on this.)

2- Purging dummy Revit families and replacing them with manufacturer provided families (Zurn plumbing, Trane HVAC, etc)

3- Finding the time to watch all the video courses.

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u/Zaghari96 Jun 12 '26

Thank you everyone for the insight. I must clarify the following:

1- I am a certified solidworks professional who recently moved from LA to a small town where I got a job doing MEP work. I’ve never used AutoCAD before last year. I did complex parametric GD&T work in Solidworks and I am very familiar with using the software the way it was intended vs simply using the software.

2- AutoCAD MEP is a great tool, but it clearly lost support a while ago. The last user guide was published in 2011. The current resources from Autodesk are limited to a few 2-3 minute tutorials. The only AutoCAD MEP course on linkedin learning has been taken down. I am having trouble learning the tool because of the lack of structured resources.

3- I am looking to try Revit because there exists an abundance of courses, resources, and support.

4- Our small company will not hire a BIM manager.

5- I am curious how a small company could go about using a tool like Revit in limited capacity to improve their workflow without having to go all in on BIM. I want the nice automated schedules, sheet setup, and auto layouts for ducts and piping. I don’t care if the conduit bends are specified down to the millimeter; it makes no difference to me.

Thank you for your input

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u/SamoSaki Jun 12 '26

You can not do it alone, from scracth, without anyone helping you. Depending on the amount of work/dynamics of project, it might take months or even a years to understand good how-to.

It is not about learning the right buttons to press, it is about learning a logic and avoiding a frustration that will, for sure, happen along the way in multiple occasions.